Advice Request: Maui, Hawaii Honeymoon

Knottie1462405741

Hi there! I'm looking for some advice on the best hotel to honeymoon at in Maui. We're looking for romantic, mostly adults, but as affordable as possible. We don't necessarily need ocean-front, just romantic. Any thoughts? 

Also, if anyone has good advice on how to get good rates on airfare in July, I'd love to hear it. 

Thanks in advance

charlotte989875

You might want to try the Honeymoon board, cross-post there (put an XP in your title) as there are posters who will check that board but not here. I also think there is a thread now about Hawaii. Good luck!

mrsconn23

 Maui. in general, is not cheap.  

Your best bet is to build a package.  If you have access to Costco Travel, they had some of the best pricing that I saw for packages.  But between air and hotel, you should still expect to spend a minimum of $3-$4k for a week (more if you're going longer). You can shop around for a good deal...even price to and from the west coast and then try and find cheap flights for your round-trip to/from the west coast.   If you put some work into it, you can 

Kiehei is likely the least expensive, but you're not going to stay on the beach (it all seemed to be public beach and the resorts were across the street from it).  We got lucky because we had friends hook us up through their hotel points for our stay, but I saw the bill and the RAC rate for where we stayed was insane.  We stayed in Wailea, which is the highest of the high end of the island.  

You can eat cheaper around the island between food trucks and what not.  Kihei is the least-expensive place to eat restaurant-wise.  You can also go up to Maui Brewing Company and they have food trucks daily.

You will need a car to get around.  Maui is not a big island, but there is no road that runs through it.  So to get around, you're going up and around and down (or vice versa).  

OliveOilsMom

To add to what MrsConn wrote above, July is the most expensive month to travel to any Hawaiian island.  July is the one month where kids across the country are pretty much all out of school, so its the month that most people travel.

While we did not go to Maui for our Honeymoon, we did do Oahu & Kauai.  Our airfare alone was just shy of $4k (2012).  We thankfully had a timeshare to stay at for one of the weeks, which is probably the only reason we were able to afford the week and a half in Hawaii we did.

And if you are flying from the east coast, which is where H & I live, we built our flights around which west coast airport was cheapest to fly to Hawaii on.  We did go back again in 2015 and flew through Seattle.  It was cheaper to start our airfare package from Seattle and bring us back all the way to Philly, including our island hopping flights.  I then booked a separate flight to Seattle from Philly for the evening before.

You will need a car, unless you want to stick to one town.  The various towns are all spaced our pretty far from each other.  You also won't find any hotel that will have limited kids in July.  Kannapali has a few different hotel chains and they may work for you.  You also may want to look into AirB&B, etc. to find a private place to stay with a kitchen.  You could then cook breakfasts in and pack lunches for day trips.  It could help you save some money. 

The first time I went to Hawaii, I stayed in Maui.  We were just outside of Lahaina in the Puamana community.  It is a gated community that has an adult only pool.  There are multiple sized units available and it should afford you the privacy you want.  It is also located right on the water, so even if your unit isn't on the water, a short walk each night will allow you to watch the sunset without leaving your development.